unforum

[GunsmithCat]

I think I'm going to back through the HTT and see what aspects are salvageable. There's still a lot of links which I think are pervasive.

For instance:

Comatas Myth - Cryopod: The similarity is too great to ignore, especially when combined with many of the casket/hushed/etc phrases. However, not only now can I not prove it's a SPARTAN, I find it highly unlikely. The only two female SPARTANs are Linda and Kelly ... and Linda is accounted for and we're placing Kelly outside of any connection with Melissa.

Applebee/Reach: The Widow's Story's references to castle (CASTLE), Reach, being defeated, etc. seems too have a high number of coincidence. I'm still leaning towards Melissa's ship being the Applebee - but admit it's pretty tenous now. The fact that Applebee was a governor's ship, and maybe not in actual military service, may disprove that.

Plus, we don't have any real connecting references to the bees and the ship. In fact, the bees seem pervasive as a metaphor but their usage is pretty vague.

Timing of Troy's destruction: Simply fits the Halo timeline better, and could be important for trying to decipher the shipwreck. Can someone who has read the books confirm or deny this one?

Flea as Covenant AI: I think it fits. Got little evidence. Will be working on that one.

[Cu Roi]

GSC, no problem my friend, please don't take my suggestion to read the text 1st as anything other than waht it is. A suggestion. It will clear up many issues for you. Unforunately, or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, many more questions will be raised.

CorSorei: Because W'rkncacnter was already taken! So was PrettyPinkPrincess...

[Cu Roi]

Oh...GSC, the Applebee IS an ONI stealth ship disguised as a pleasure yatch. It's just not the same ship as the one Halsey flees in.

The Applebee is only mentioned as being in space dock at Reach. Along with the Lark and Circumference. After that we haven't heard from it since, at least to my knowledge.

Based on some points CorSorei has made, it could be more likely that Melissa's former home is the Applebee. If any ship could escape the Fall of Reach I'd place my bets on a spy ship. I do have the impression that most of Melissa's memory takes place before Reach fell. We don't know when these ships left dry dock, and we can't really be certain.

So that part of the theory is still intact...just the whole Halsey/Kelly thing isn't looking too solid.

[GunsmithCat]

[Knight Hawk]

Don't forget too that at the end of "The Fall of Reach" the Circumfrence was pretty much destroyed by the Master Chief, Linda, and Fred. If I am not mistaken MC destroyed the Circumfrence's nav computer, and if I am also not mistaken I think the Cole Protocol says that a ships AI must also be destroyed but I do not recall the book ever mentioning that the Circumfrences AI was destroyed. So that does leave the Applebee and Lark unaccounted for.

I definitely do think that the Pious Flea is a Covenant AI tool. What originally led the Covenant to Reach if you remember was a small tracking device that attached itself to the Iroqouis before it jumped out of the Sigma Octanus system. To add a little twist to your spec, the Pious Flea may be this tracking device on Dr. Halsey's ship which is not only a tracking device, but a recorder type of device that records any transmissions. The Covenant is a zealously religious race who say that the extermination of earth is "the will of the Gods". Most times I have seen the word Pious used it is used in conjunction with religious jargon.

[jellyfish_green]

Re: Nothing wrong with history...

[GunsmithCat]

Is there anything in Circumference's destruction that could trigger a Forerunner event warping time/space? It occured to me while revising the timeline that the accident that propels Melissa to us doesn't necessarily have to occur around Earth (although that would definitely seem the most likely).

Another speculation on the Flea:
I think it's infested Melissa and SP a bit. The "Seek the Truth, Reveal the Truth, Behold the Truth" repitition doesn't sound like either Melissa or SP, and sounds an awful preachy to me.

Maybe this is all the Flea knows how to say?

[Scumbag]

Remember that the Holy Light was able to warp time, in order to put it and the MC at the same place at the same time.

It is Deus Ex Machina.

[GunsmithCat]

In light of Phase 3 and some of the newly found text and monologues, thought I would touch on this again.

Flea as a Covenant AI seems almost certainly true at this point.

The new text is also making me agree with the speculation that at some point Melissa started to reverse some of her programming - and instead of avoiding Earth and destroying herself, she may have sought Earth out and seeks self-preservation.

I think one of the most fundamental questions we've got right now is the identity of the Sleeping Princess. At this point, I'm leaning to splitting the Cryopod Theory into two halves:

1) It's literal, the SP is somehow connected to a real lifepod and a real person.

2) It's allegorical, and the Cryopod/Honey references are merely a description of the SP is staying "alive".

Biggest mystery I have with SP is - she seems capable of watching every other character - even when others are dead. Yet, the other characters seem either oblivious of her, or uncaring. How is this possible?

Also, I'm struggling to find connections between the Castaway and the overall story, as his importance seems to have risen in the new text.

And a final thought - if what Melissa picked up in space was a Forerunner artifact, and it's responsible for their return to Earth/this timeline ... then wouldn't it make sense that it might be used to head back to their time? Or "escape" this Earth?


A question for the big O and other Halo-phytes. When is it realized that the Covenant have information about Earth? Is it explained how they got that info?

[chaotic_mind]

Covenant discover Earth

[tsioc]

at the end of First Strike, I got the feeling that all the searching that the Covenent were doing, all the artifacts they were examining, that they were all leading to Earth.

The prophet said something like "Soon we will make the great journey."

Not just any journey, but the Great Journey.

Have they been searching for Heaven? Some promised land? Earth?

[GunsmithCat]

But the fact that it's left unknown leaves it open for this ARG.

And it's a total META argument, but what better way to hype a new game than to slowly spurn out the missing link between the last book and the new game?

[jellyfish_green]

Note:
Somewhere on the Halo story page, one of the Cortana letters bears a return address of the Arecibo radio telescope. Loosely related, someone points out we've been sending radio signals into space for years - sometimes deliberately, advertising our location. So perhaps the Covenant got all the information they wanted on Earth's location, once they were within 300 light-years or so. Also gives the Cov all their pity quotes, through listening to evangelical stations.

Other thought is that Greeks (and Phonecians) navigated their ships by stars, so once you get a good set of human history, you can work backwards from referenced star constellations to find Earth, rather than needing a Nav database.

Spec:
My wild spec somehow keeps coming back to "Sleeping Princess came aboard on Floating Cylindrical Forerunner Artifact". Thus her "coffin" isn't silicon, it's osmium.

Problems are as follows: "size of a suitcase" - Princess is an AI core, or, if a life form in cryo, rather short.

"in English strange" - how did she learn English? Very adaptable?

"voodoo parents" - a strange way to reference Melissa, under this hypothesis. And then there's the Princess/Queen relationship thing.

And of course we know little about Forerunner. The Halo conjecture often mentions perhaps WE are descendents of Forerunner - Cortana letters even mentioned "Lost Colonies" of humans that were found some time after FTL travel got started, but seemed to have been there forever - and maybe this goes some way towards explaining why the Covs hate us on sight - they've seen humans before. Or maybe its those evangelical stations again.

Conjecture:
Interesting that thus the Forerunner Princess may seem familiar to us because in some way she is innately human. Perhaps the secret of the Princess is the great Truth of Cortanas, the missing link in the Bungie chain, confirmation that we are Forerunner and there is something on Earth the Covies want to control.

Utter conjecture, and we're breathing thin oxygen now:
Maybe it's Atlantis, as mentioned by Plato, one of those Greeks we seem so fond of.

(because, you know, The 5th Element already claimed the Pyramids.)

[subatomicsatan]

i have just started reading the halo novels and already i have found some very interesting correlations...trout me if necessary, but i've not seen all this mentioned elsewhere.

it starts with cortana interfacing with the covenant flagship's network:

pg64:

[chaotic_mind]